The present invention generally relates to computer resources, and more specifically, to enabling and tracking usage of computing resources.
Software asset management tools are becoming widely used in a variety of computing environments. As described herein, these tools refer to software programs (or sets of software programs) that discover and collect information about software instances deployed in monitored environments. Such a tool may be used by an entity's asset administrator to collect metrics (i.e., measures of properties) about software instances for one or more purposes relating to that entity's financial, regulatory, or licensing requirements. These requirements may incorporate several tasks relating to software license compliance monitoring (e.g., ensuring that all software instances are licensed and metering these software instances to determine the applicable fees that are due to licensors). Furthermore, as software owners continue to shift toward complex software licensing schemes, software asset management tools may continue to play increasingly significant roles.